There would be benefits to a winning bidder in LA's fiber bonanza, though. While the vendor would have to provide free Internet to everyone at the network's slowest speeds (potentially with ads to support the service), it could also charge a premium for everything up to gigabit lines and could sell TV and phone service to everyone in LA. Moreover, the winning bidder could get contracts to provide the city government with data center hosting and perhaps other IT services like e-mail.

EPB modernized its electric system with 170,000 smart meters at the same time that it installed fiber.

This gets left out of the conversation quite a bit. Our area (yeah, I'm here in Chattanooga) spent a lot of money upgrading it's electrical grid. In addition to 'smart' meters at the home level, fiber was routed out along transmission lines and down to substations as well. This allowed for seamless real time electrical grid communication across the entire Tennessee valley. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but aside from FTTH, losses due to power outages has gone way down as well. Half a decade ago during any particularly bad storm the electrical company might loose wide swaths of homes and businesses when a tree took out a power line or a substation failed. Nowadays if a line faults for whatever reason power is automatically rerouted around the immediate area, the near exact location of the fault is transmitted to repair crews immediately, and much time is saved getting the systems back up and functioning correctly.

I would think if that maybe that approach, the smart grids and all their benefits, which would 'Include' FTTH were approached, it might be much easier for communities to pull off something along the lines of what Chattanooga did. Just a thought.

Find a neighborhood that is slated to have its streets replaced in the near future and then make this offer for just that neighborhood and pass the savings from not having to rip up the road to the ISP. If it's successful, move on to the next neighborhood. Worst case, they have citywide fiber in a decade. Best case, the ISP does so well, that they become willing to pay to rip up roads to lay fiber and the city is wired in a few years.

EPB modernized its electric system with 170,000 smart meters at the same time that it installed fiber.

This gets left out of the conversation quite a bit. Our area (yeah, I'm here in Chattanooga) spent a lot of money upgrading it's electrical grid. In addition to 'smart' meters at the home level, fiber was routed out along transmission lines and down to substations as well. This allowed for seamless real time electrical grid communication across the entire Tennessee valley. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but aside from FTTH, losses due to power outages has gone way down as well. Half a decade ago during any particularly bad storm the electrical company might loose wide swaths of homes and businesses when a tree took out a power line or a substation failed. Nowadays if a line faults for whatever reason power is automatically rerouted around the immediate area, the near exact location of the fault is transmitted to repair crews immediately, and much time is saved getting the systems back up and functioning correctly.

I would think if that maybe that approach, the smart grids and all their benefits, which would 'Include' FTTH were approached, it might be much easier for communities to pull off something along the lines of what Chattanooga did. Just a thought.

Yes, but how much of that fiber infrastructure was built with the intent of being a broadband network? In other words the demands placed on a smart power grid isn't the same ones placed on commercial/residential broadband service.

Shouldn't be a surprise. Quite a few people don't understand all that goes into the internet.

Nope, not at all... but as someone who often educates policymakers, it's all the more frustrating to see when the people who should have been educating him either haven't, or they weren't able to pound it through his head and make the information stick.

Yeah, granting another monopoly( esp. for providing IT services to the city ) to another scumbag corporation is the way to go... As if we haven't been down that road 1000 times and been screwed 8 ways til Sunday.

There is only one answer and that is to nationalize ALL communications infrastructure, fiber, cell, cable, everything. The maintenance of existing infrastructure and the building of new would be funded by all comers who wish to sell services to people and businesses alike. Anyone could buy into a market, be it local or nation-wide and through the subscriber revenue they pay a percentage into the system. The rest they can have as profit.

Imagine a future with real market competition and choice. Imagine a future with constant drive and innovation to increase speed. Imagine the choke-hold of the cartels being broken, and having huge choice of content to access, and not the walled-garden the current model is becoming.

But, socialism something... something... War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, one company that controls all access, charges you to access content, charges the content provider even more, and pushes their own, shitty products instead ( complete with NSA taps and their spying to further feed you ads ) is Choice.

As someone who lives near LA and driven around in it many times the idea that they could install fiber/conduit while doing street repairs is laughable. They don't fix the streets at all, some roads have terrible potholes and most are in general disrepair

In fact most roads and freeways in so cal are in serious need of help. It's so hard for them to do road work tho because of the amount of traffic and disruptions that road work entails causes even worse traffic than the current horrible traffic.

So the goal of this project is to a) score political points in the short term and b) have tax payer money change hands from government to private contractor.

Whenever a project goes ahead despite the obvious reality of failure, there's a project manager somewhere up the chain with an ulterior motive. Successful completion of project doesn't matter at that point.

EPB modernized its electric system with 170,000 smart meters at the same time that it installed fiber.

This gets left out of the conversation quite a bit. Our area (yeah, I'm here in Chattanooga) spent a lot of money upgrading it's electrical grid. In addition to 'smart' meters at the home level, fiber was routed out along transmission lines and down to substations as well. This allowed for seamless real time electrical grid communication across the entire Tennessee valley. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but aside from FTTH, losses due to power outages has gone way down as well. Half a decade ago during any particularly bad storm the electrical company might loose wide swaths of homes and businesses when a tree took out a power line or a substation failed. Nowadays if a line faults for whatever reason power is automatically rerouted around the immediate area, the near exact location of the fault is transmitted to repair crews immediately, and much time is saved getting the systems back up and functioning correctly.

I would think if that maybe that approach, the smart grids and all their benefits, which would 'Include' FTTH were approached, it might be much easier for communities to pull off something along the lines of what Chattanooga did. Just a thought.

Yes, but how much of that fiber infrastructure was built with the intent of being a broadband network? In other words the demands placed on a smart power grid isn't the same ones placed on commercial/residential broadband service.

I don't know, but the chicken/egg problem is not what I was trying to address. I was really looking at the issue from another angle. If a city could not only upgrade it's electrical grid (reliable power is powerful business incentive, as are the savings incurred by investing in a smart grid) but along with that provide a solution to fiber to the home with gigabit data all around, as data is now reaching the point that it is a necessary utility, that would seem to me a mighty big incentive right there. One that the general population might rally behind, like happened in Chattanooga.

Blumenfield sounds like he has no idea what's involved with the internet aside from magic and unicorns...

Or even a good idea.

From The Article wrote:

Moreover, the winning bidder could get contracts to provide the city government with data center hosting and perhaps other IT services like e-mail.

"I like to think of it as limited at this point only by your imagination," Los Angeles City Council member Bob Blumenfield, who came up with the idea, told Ars.

Seriously, the only limit on them is their imagination? I hope that's just a turn of phrase and not the end policy.

Having said that, I sure wish we had what Chattanooga has. My 22Mbps with Cox just increased again, second time in less than 12 months, and the explanation I got was that it was partly due to increased programming costs, and the explanation also ignored my inquiry as to what I got in return for paying more.

I prefer quadracorns...you can find a unicorn anywhere but not quadracorns!Because well all know you can tape a horn onto a cow and call that a unicorn =/ Should change your title Ars and edit unicorn to quadracorn!

EPB modernized its electric system with 170,000 smart meters at the same time that it installed fiber.

This gets left out of the conversation quite a bit. Our area (yeah, I'm here in Chattanooga) spent a lot of money upgrading it's electrical grid. In addition to 'smart' meters at the home level, fiber was routed out along transmission lines and down to substations as well. This allowed for seamless real time electrical grid communication across the entire Tennessee valley. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but aside from FTTH, losses due to power outages has gone way down as well. Half a decade ago during any particularly bad storm the electrical company might loose wide swaths of homes and businesses when a tree took out a power line or a substation failed. Nowadays if a line faults for whatever reason power is automatically rerouted around the immediate area, the near exact location of the fault is transmitted to repair crews immediately, and much time is saved getting the systems back up and functioning correctly.

I would think if that maybe that approach, the smart grids and all their benefits, which would 'Include' FTTH were approached, it might be much easier for communities to pull off something along the lines of what Chattanooga did. Just a thought.

Yes, but how much of that fiber infrastructure was built with the intent of being a broadband network? In other words the demands placed on a smart power grid isn't the same ones placed on commercial/residential broadband service.

I don't know, but the chicken/egg problem is not what I was trying to address. I was really looking at the issue from another angle. If a city could not only upgrade it's electrical grid (reliable power is powerful business incentive, as are the savings incurred by investing in a smart grid) but along with that provide a solution to fiber to the home with gigabit data all around, as data is now reaching the point that it is a necessary utility, that would seem to me a mighty big incentive right there. One that the general population might rally behind, like happened in Chattanooga.

Idea bundling, like, why not run fiber through the water or sewer lines when upgrading? Considering the poor state of our infrastructure that may happen much sooner.

Yes, but how much of that fiber infrastructure was built with the intent of being a broadband network? In other words the demands placed on a smart power grid isn't the same ones placed on commercial/residential broadband service.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your question, but the entire EPB electrical service area (600 square miles) can subscribe to gigabit fiber. So the same fiber that made the smart grid possible is moving large amounts of commercial and residential data.

I don't know, but the chicken/egg problem is not what I was trying to address. I was really looking at the issue from another angle. If a city could not only upgrade it's electrical grid (reliable power is powerful business incentive, as are the savings incurred by investing in a smart grid) but along with that provide a solution to fiber to the home with gigabit data all around, as data is now reaching the point that it is a necessary utility, that would seem to me a mighty big incentive right there. One that the general population might rally behind, like happened in Chattanooga.

Idea bundling, like, why not run fiber through the water or sewer lines when upgrading? Considering the poor state of our infrastructure that may happen much sooner.

The town of Bournemouth in England did exactly that. They laid fibre through the sewers a few years ago, now they're the first and only place in the UK with residential gigabit service.

EPB modernized its electric system with 170,000 smart meters at the same time that it installed fiber.

This gets left out of the conversation quite a bit. Our area (yeah, I'm here in Chattanooga) spent a lot of money upgrading it's electrical grid. In addition to 'smart' meters at the home level, fiber was routed out along transmission lines and down to substations as well. This allowed for seamless real time electrical grid communication across the entire Tennessee valley. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but aside from FTTH, losses due to power outages has gone way down as well. Half a decade ago during any particularly bad storm the electrical company might loose wide swaths of homes and businesses when a tree took out a power line or a substation failed. Nowadays if a line faults for whatever reason power is automatically rerouted around the immediate area, the near exact location of the fault is transmitted to repair crews immediately, and much time is saved getting the systems back up and functioning correctly.

I would think if that maybe that approach, the smart grids and all their benefits, which would 'Include' FTTH were approached, it might be much easier for communities to pull off something along the lines of what Chattanooga did. Just a thought.

The problem is that a lot of the utilities these days are NOT municipal utilities unfortunately.

In my area with have BGE, which actually ain't bad and we have Pepco (kiss of death). Pepco is notoriously horrible. Durring the last few years (the past year excepted) anytime there has been a major snow storm, wind storm or similar through the area there are thousands of Pepco customers who are without power for days to a over a week afterward. This is right by DC.

Pepco has been making record profits year after year for the last 10 (or most of the last 10), however the amount of money they've been spending on line and equipment maintenance has dropped most years. Resulting in the current problems.

I don't think Pepco would likely invest in something like that unless they saw some profit motive or were required too.

That said, BGE IS rolling out smart meters through my area right now (I have yet to heard of any Pepco proposals to do such a thing...thank goodness I am on BGE).

EPB modernized its electric system with 170,000 smart meters at the same time that it installed fiber.

This gets left out of the conversation quite a bit. Our area (yeah, I'm here in Chattanooga) spent a lot of money upgrading it's electrical grid. In addition to 'smart' meters at the home level, fiber was routed out along transmission lines and down to substations as well. This allowed for seamless real time electrical grid communication across the entire Tennessee valley. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but aside from FTTH, losses due to power outages has gone way down as well. Half a decade ago during any particularly bad storm the electrical company might loose wide swaths of homes and businesses when a tree took out a power line or a substation failed. Nowadays if a line faults for whatever reason power is automatically rerouted around the immediate area, the near exact location of the fault is transmitted to repair crews immediately, and much time is saved getting the systems back up and functioning correctly.

I would think if that maybe that approach, the smart grids and all their benefits, which would 'Include' FTTH were approached, it might be much easier for communities to pull off something along the lines of what Chattanooga did. Just a thought.

Yes, but how much of that fiber infrastructure was built with the intent of being a broadband network? In other words the demands placed on a smart power grid isn't the same ones placed on commercial/residential broadband service.

True in theory, but I think that a fiber connection would allow more than enough extra bandwidth to supply connections that are far and away faster than the alternatives, while still reserving enough bandwidth to run the grid.